S. A. David: "I would die a writer."

"I became a citizen of the literary world as soon as I could recite the twenty six alphabets of the English Language off-hand and used them to, correctly and sometimes incorrectly, spell. I was in kindergarten and I used to rip the pages of my school books so I could doodle what I would now call abstracts. But the mindless sketches I drew on paper did not make sense in the eyes of my mother who ensured that I never tore my books again, maybe that was why I never became an artist. When I continued to rip the poor pages of my books to do my regular mindless sketches, even into my primary school level, my lovely mother had to number the pages of my books and if I ripped anyone which she was sure to find out, she would spank my hands with the rod of correction and she would say 'read your reader and stop tearing your books'.
"She unconsciously instilled in me the sacredness of books. Daddy did not bother much about my books as long as I returned with an impressive report card at the end of the term. All he did was to provide our needs and I'm sure he knew he had a wife who cared very much about chidren and so took advantage of it. Albeit he contributed to my rich vocabulary as he ensured that I learnt two new words every day which consequently made me know the meaning of words- words that people had never heard or come across- and the right context for their utilization but I could not tell a simple meaning when asked.
"After my mother succeeded in making me "resent" fine art, I took to reading anything I came across and that was how I stumbled upon My Book of Bible Stories- a Watchtower publication, that summarized the bible, for children. However, before I stumbled upon the Christian Literature, I finished reading the Macmillian English Language text prescribed for my levels before the teacher was done and it made me long to read the prescribed text for the next class. I was already an avid reader at a very early age as the first characters I came in contact with were Simbi, Ali, Agbo, Edet and Idris.
"Reading opened a void that it could not fill. As I read what I came across and what came across me, I found out that my questions were piling with no answers. But I did not give up reading. I continued reading in the hopeless hope that I would some day find the answers to my questions and that the answers would shine light through the deep opened void. I started to write some really offensive stories that nobody ever read because I made sure no one ever saw it.
"Nevertheless in Primary three I stopped writing and I did not know why.
"But in primary five I resumed writing my offensive stories which I either chewed the paper until it became paper mash or burnt it when none of my parents were around. It was at this same time of my life that I started doing some funny journalistic writing also because my form teacher asked every primary five pupil to watch the network news everyday and report it in their own words. Anyone who failed to obey the said instruction was sure to be spanked with the rod of correction. My passion for writing continued until I became a secondary school student.
"In junior secondary school, my writing ceased. For the second time I did not know why, it just ceased and I was just a child doing his best to survive in a boarding school. I was concerned only about making sure I credited Math so as to impress my father who was paying exhorbitant school fees. I wanted to be a doctor because daddy wanted his first child to be a doctor and I bought the idea. During preps, while my classmates read, I drew charts of how my hospital would look. I had the dream of having every department and area of  specialization in my hospital. Maybe my dreams were invalid.
"When I made it to senior secondary school, the passion hit me hard like espresso and nostalgia set in. I wanted to resume writing but did not know where and how to begin. I wanted to escape from a restricted world and I felt writing was the only way out. Then I began by keeping a journal of my dreams and nightmares but that was not enough because my dreams and nightmares were an already-made story which I had no control over, and were not original.
"Mr. Clement taught two subjects - English Language and Literature in English- and while many my classmates found him boring and uninteresting, he was all that was needed to launch me into my dreams. He taught Literature with passion. He gave assignments and I never took them with a finger tip.  Even though I was a science student and I wanted to be a doctor, I read Literature more.
"In class, Mr Clement called up experiences. He made us act the Ministry of Education prescribed plays which included William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Othello and The Merchant of Venice which became my favourite of Shakespeare's. We also did Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest; Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not to Blame, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, among others. Mr. Clement opened me up to countless foreign and local literature- prose, plays and poetry.
"One holiday I saw the movie adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and I was so inspired. It was the best movie I had ever seen at the time and it moved me to discover that I was a playwright and screenwriter. When the holiday was over and I returned to school, the images of Frodo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey, later Gandalf the White, refused to leave my mind.
"Have you seen Lord of the Rings? I would always find a way to chip in this question into any discussion with my friends and classmates in a class divided along cliques of the hard, soft and eccentric- I belonged to the eccentric. However, I was successfully bullied into not mentioning Tolkien's work in our discussions but it still did not take the pictures of Smeagol and the elves off my mind. I had to do something.
"I started to rewrite Lord of the Rings movie as it was done. Let me say "verbatim" and I marvelled at the fact that I could recall the scenes and the dialogue as it was in the movie. Some of my classmates read it and the next line was WHY NOT JUST WRITE YOUR OWN INSTEAD OF WRITING SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN DONE ALREADY?
"I started writing my original scripts replete with kings and queens who lived in the cities and did not want their children to marry servants. They had enough...to continue reading click here